Kate Humble is back on HGTV with The Weekend Workshop.
The new series, airing from today, is tackling home restorations and mini build projects.
In addition, Humble, joined by Max McMurdo and Zoe Pocock, will be showing off a few home tweaks from within their own houses.
She talks through why she hopes the show is the feelgood factor everyone needs and the home project that meant a lot to her on a personal level.
Describe the premise of the show in your own words
"Well, it's basically a show embracing the concept of upcycling, so, rather than just throwing something away that either feels dated or is broken in some way, or you've got something lying around that has been cluttering up the house for ages and doesn't really serve a useful purpose, this show is about kind of looking at old things with new eyes and coming up with ways of refreshing them or repurposing them into something that basically is new and useful and beautiful hopefully."
It feels like the uplifting thing everyone needs right now...
"I think it is very uplifting, it feels very timely really. And oddly, it wasn't planned to be a lockdown show and although we obviously filmed it in lockdown, my husband, who is a film-maker, he filmed it, so we didn't actually have to do other things differently... and yeah I think, you know, it was something that lots of people were thinking about.
"Lots of people suddenly with a bit more time had this kind of urge to be a little bit creative and make things for their homes or their gardens, so it does feel quite timely, like it has tapped into a bit of a zeitgeist and a bit of a... response to a difficult situation, allowing people to get creative and have fun doing it."
Who else appears in the show with you?
"It's three of us - Max and Zoe - who are, it has to be said, a lot more talented and creative than me. I've been a long admirer of people like Max and Zoe who seem to be able to create things out of nothing with seemingly no effort at all.
"For me, I can have lots of ideas but I do find doing them quite difficult so it was a big learning curve for me to actually, instead of sit and think, 'Oh, I could maybe do this with that one day', actually having to get on and do it.
"And you know, learn about different drill bits and how you screw a screw in straight and kind of problem solve. So I probably had to do a lot more problem-solving than Max and Zoe, who as I say are just sort of brilliant at it. What I hope is that people watching the show who maybe are a bit more like me and have always felt a little bit daunted at the prospect of upcycling something, might have a go, because they might look at me and think, 'Ah well, if she can do it, we definitely can'."
What can you tell us about the clay pizza oven you build as one of the projects on the show?
"We had the idea because, before this project was even talked about, we were building a new pond (at home) and so we dug it out with a digger and we've got really heavy clay soil and I was like, 'We've got all this clay, it just seems like a waste not to do something with it'.
"And then this project came up and I said to the production company, we've got all this clay, we could use it to make an oven. It was just a really nice way of using, the perfect thing of we've got this stuff lying round, we're not quite sure what to do with it, let's try and make something beautiful and useful.
"It's a long project and it's quite complicated but it was lovely that at the beginning of the filming process it was the very first thing we started to do because we knew it would take quite a long time to build... but on pretty much our last day filming we were eating pizzas, which was great."
There was also an emotional side behind a few of the stories, did you find that at all with anything you upcycled?
"I know there were some things that Zoe did that, they were old pieces of furniture or old things that were very connected to her family. I didn't have any of that but for me, creating something as lasting as a pizza oven, that's something that's going to be, it's now very much part of our lives and something that we use and that we built here and there is something very satisfying about that.
"One of the other things we did was we made a herbal bath. And the herbal bath was an old bath we found in our local reclamation yard and planted as a herb garden and it looks beautiful and it's just outside our back door. So I go and pick herbs from it every time I'm cooking, so that's really nice.
"It feels like we've created things that have a genuine use day to day and just, you know, become part of our lives. It's always really lovely to receive a present from somebody that feels very personal and I think doing projects like the ones we've done all feel very personal, they feel like they've come from a very personal space rather than somebody saying, 'Oh, why don't you make this?'."
Can you tell us anything about your upcoming book?
"It comes out on September 17 and it's called A Year Of Living Simply. Sort of bizarrely it is about a lot of the things that I think people have started to connect to in these last few months.
"It's about the pleasures to be had of a life that is simpler, that doesn't involve going out and buying things, it's more about the pleasure you get from growing things, from making things, from mending things, from just, you know, simply activities or pleasures like cooking your favourite thing or going and foraging for stuff or having time in nature and going for walks. So, in a weird way, it's a celebration of what lockdown has given many people."
The Weekend Workshop airs from today on HGTV and is available to stream on dplay
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